We have Verizon for our cells. Been with them for over 4 yrs now.  In the last week, I have had 3 calls not make it to me, and, the voice mails arrive 10-12 hours later. NOT ACCEPTABLE in this day and age. Plus, we are in an area that isn’t overloaded, like San Francisco, or New York.  The last time this happened, was right after my wife had a heart attack, so, receiving calls was kinda important, you know… Turns out, that during that time, they were updating the system to 3G, so, maybe, this means that 4G is a’comin…

If not, then maybe ATT is looking better here. I am not going to accept missed calls… There is no excuse in the midwest…

Hi
last night, (Saturday) we took my sister in law, who is in town from the big city, to a hip local restaurant. Called Brio, it’s one of the best places we have to show off, food wise… It’s a ’small plate/tapas’ style establishment, with a great staff.

We each ordered something different from each other… We started with hen of the woods mushrooms on pasta, olive oil, and garlic. A lot of garlic. I had never had that species of mushroom before, but, I will have them again! Mary had in chili sauce. She loved them. Maggie and I don’t like scallops. Yuck… Maggie had a asparagus tempura. The girls loved it. I don’t like asparagus either… Yeah, I know, what a picky eater…
Next, we had spicy asian noodles, but not too spicy. Fresh beans, mushrooms and onions chopped into it. Mmmm mm. Maggie had chicken lemon crepes with a nice reduction on it…. Mary skipped this round… We did share with her… A little.

The last course was a great mini ribs on a chipotle corn cake for me. The girls decided to skip this round, I should have, ‘cuz I was already stuffed, but, they are sooooo good! By the way, these are not ‘full’ plate meals, sort of half size…

For dessert, Mary a blueberry bread pudding. Talk about tasty/sweet. I had the ever popular, traditional creme brulee’. We did share with Maggie, but she was the sensible one, and decided not to order any more…. I did push the sweet meter over the top by ordering a ginger ale. Huh, what you say? A Canada Dry to go with this? Nope… Brio makes their own ginger ale. Not too sweet, but what a bite. Mmm mm.
We stayed for over 2 and a half hours, sipping wine, coffee, and talking about everything under the moon, since it was dark out. Our waiter, Dan, has served us before, and is a great guy, along with being a wonderful waiter. He and his partner had gone to France since the last time we were in, so there were stories to tell and hear.
Mary had a great time! Said it was every bit as good as anything in NYC that she has visited. Cool! Next time, we’ll try somewhere she hasn’t been to.
If you are close to Rockford, and want a really nice dining experience, try Brio. I know, sounds like a Yelp review, but it is a nice place!
Thanks for reading my rambling….

Here’s what we did on Halloween

For some reason that seems to be greed and stupidity, our govt. is in Seoul now, working in closed session, ‘for national security’ (movies, music, disney, and royalties are national security?) to totally snafu the copyright laws, and the way you can end up being permanently booted from the internet w/out proper legal process. That’s what  the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is ALL ABOUT.
Here are two links to stories from the  EFF and BoingBoing about it. Read and contact your congress/senator…

Another week passes…

Went to a pumkin/halloween party on Sat @ Claudia’s and Al’s. A great time was had by all!

a party where a good time was had by all!

It rained, it was damp, it rained, it was hot, humid and more humid. Did we have fun. Of course we did.
See picture of the afore blogged tent. When we arrived at Willow on Friday afternoon it had been raining for about 5 hours. Real rain, not that pretend rain.
You can see the motor home of friend Mike in front of our car.
We had a lovely compound set up, and even though the weather was damp we did some jamming Friday evening and enjoyed just sitting in a cow pasture.

Yeah, it was that muddy

The “road” down the middle of the camp area was well chewed up by the time we arrived
due to the heavy rain & we all had our fingers crossed that come Sunday we would be able to get out.

Haute cuisine

Nothing like the fine eating experiences you have while camping.

Really it works best to keep food to a minimum for us. I’m not big into cooking and cleaning up while camping. So we prepared most of our food before hand and just heated it up. We did eat more than hot dogs. Note: these are 97% fat free weiners. Even while camping you have to do your best to eat healthy.

Ground zero for us
That’s Art’s Air Stream trailer, our tent and Mike’s motor home.

The compound as we referred to it. If you’d heard the weather we had you wonder if it’s worth being out there. Saturday morning it started to rain about 3 and rained another 5 hours. We hung out in the compound and gave each other grief till the sun came out and we went over to sign up for a time slot to perform.

Tim in the tent

Tim called this a hobbit door on the tent. Yes it really did have a door. And note the lovely rug in front of the door. That’s the rug I crocheted with plastic bags. It worked out great. Think I’ll make an even bigger one for next year.

We did our gig on the stage, and I was surprised at the all round turn out. We had fun, and that’s the big thing. Well that and entertaining the audience. After all it is a fund raiser for the church.

After all the joking I’ve done about the incredibly big tent I have to say I was very happy we had that one. Yes, it was really waterproof. Just 1 or 2 drops of water on Saturday.

Did get a chance to hang up my

curtains on Saturday. Nice for shade and just a lovely all round accent for the campsite.

We packed up and left this morning so we could get home and unpack the carload of stinky clothes and smoke permeated stuff and catch up on some sleep before going back to work tomorrow.
You really need earplugs if you want to sleep at this festival. It’s not the drum circles. I enjoyed that. It’s the fact that some campsites do not go to sleep till dawn.

After people have been enjoying an evening of “good times” they are not using indoor voices even though it’s 3 in the morning. Alas, not everyone comes to Willow to enjoy playing & enjoying music. Some people pay no attention to the music at all. To each his own.

It’s these sorts of events that keep us going in the dead of winter. I know in January I’ll think of how the music flowed in the lantern lit campgrounds. How we laughed and shared stories. All the memories of rain, mud and humidity will fade and I’ll start making plans and going through the song books looking for good songs to share and thinking how I can improve the campsite decorations.
Farewell to Willow Folk Festival of 2009. Hope to see you again next year.

Our journey to the annual Willow Folk Festival begins tomorrow, and in preparation we decided it would be a good idea last Sunday to set up our tent in the back yard.
The tent we’d been using the past couple of years was not our favorite, and when I found a tent on clearance last November we were more than happy to dispose of the old one at our spring yard sale.
Since this one was new we figured we better make sure it’s okay before we go.

I’m sure the reason this one was left over was because it was initially expensive and big. Did I mention big?
Tents can be like purses or shoes, it’s hard to find the exact right fit for the occasion.

Yes, you mostly just sleep in them, so what’s the big deal? Well if it rains you spend more time in them then you’d like, and this is a music festival, so we have our guitars to keep in there too, and you have to move around in them with all the stuff you bring.

Well this one is plenty big, really big. Like I never have seen a tent this big. It even has a door frame. And a porch/awning thing. It took us 15 minutes just to figure out how to put the rain flap on.
Like the Taj Mahal in nylon.

The guaranteed waterproof part will come in handy though. The forecast is not too good. Rain Friday, really hot on Saturday followed by really really hot on Sunday. Oh well, the past couple of years have been cold, so it all balances out.

Well, that’s what makes for an adventure, so stay tuned for photos and stories next week.

Dr John Iko Iko

Morning.
We are looking for tunes to play when we do the farmers market or somewhere else, and this version of Iko Iko is ‘the bees knees’… gotta love the Dr…

HI
Our friend Mike, got a gig at a local farmers market, Friday afternoons. He was nice enough to offer us the chance to be the ‘break band’ while he rests. We get to play a half an hour at a stretch. It’s fun, and a nice way to get some microphone/audience practice. Maggie gets better and better, though she was good before, with the mic. I am getting used to playing acoustic with a pickup, or, plugged in. Not the same as playing on the deck or in the house with friends. It’s also good practice for the Willow folk festival, which is Aug 8th & 9th. Our annual camping trip, with music…
It’s a nice little market, where, things have to be local, as in grown/made within like 30-50 miles, I believe. Our friends, the Lombardos, are involved, along with several really nice people. It’s been fun, the 3 Fridays we have played.